The Spirit of Lawlessness
By L. A. S.
LEADING papers of the country are calling attention to the increase of that form of lawlessness which is commonly known as “lynch law.” It is safe to say that this is the worst form of lawlessness known in civilized lands. The crime of the individual criminal who works by stealth and secrecy and is a fugitive from justice, is one thing; but the crime of a community, acting openly and ignoring or setting at defiance the officers of the law, is another and much more serious thing. The one is the act of an enemy of the government, which the power of the government is adequate to suppress or punish; the other represents the disintegration of the government itself. The American people but faintly appreciate the serious significance of this sign of the times. No individual crime, however atrocious, can constitute such a menace to society as does the growth of the mob-law spirit. The remedy applied is far worse than the disease itself. One of the worst features of the situation is to be found in the teaching which is being put forth on the subject by men occupying positions which make them molders of public sentiment. We note in the Chicago Tribune of June 29 a number of examples of this sort. Here, for instance, is a proposition to legalize lynching, coming from a Northern city, La Crosse, Wis. A dispatch to the Tribune says:— Dr. George E. Powell, of this city, to-day gave out a remarkable statement favoring the legalizing of burning negroes at the stake. . . . Dr. Powell said in regard to lynching: “I believe that the burning of negroes at the stake for certain crimes should be legalized. If it is the consensus of opinion among the best people of this country that burning at the stake is the proper punishment of this particular crime when perpetrated by the negro, if the sentiment is so strong that the law as it exists can not be enforced, then the only salvation of the law is to legalize that which seems so desirable to the majority. A bad law respected is better than a good law violated.” On the other hand, a negro clergyman of Wilmington, Del., calls upon the men of his race to arm themselves, and take the law into their own hands. To his congregation he is reported as saying, “Be a law unto yourself. You are taught by this lesson of outrage to save yourselves from torture at the hands of the blood-seeking public.” Referring to the statements of Rev. Mr. Elwood, of Wilmington, a Presbyterian clergyman, who just prior to the recent lynching there advocated such action in case the prisoner escaped speedy punishment, the Tribune reports that some criticisms of his attitude “were answered by his congregation to-day when resolutions were read during the services expressing firm belief in the pastor’s honesty, integrity, and Christian character; appreciation of his ministerial labors in the congregation, and admiration of his manly Christian courage as expressed by his pulpit messages, and recording the belief that his message of last Sunday evening was both timely and true, sensible and Scriptural, and in nowise a cause for the actions of the citizens that followed.” Another example reported in this issue of the Tribune is the following:— Dr. W. A. Bartlett, preaching in the First Congregational church, Chicago, said he deplored lynching and burning, but wanted to suggest that in the denunciation of mobs the crimes which they sought to punish were forgotten. He said: “The indignant uprising of a community, and some of the best men in it, to avenge a wrong of such awful magnitude may be technically lawless; but the spirit which causes the uprising is the reflection of a higher civilization.” Think of such an idea of higher civilization emanating from the pulpit! Mention is also made of the sermon of a negro clergyman of Chicago, Rev. Ransom, who declared that the negro race in this country must develop more backbone and stand up for its rights. Curs get kicked, he said, but bulldogs and mastiffs are let alone. People who participate in or encourage mob lawlessness do not stop to think of the results to which it will lead. It is like a little leaven which finally leavens the whole lump. Of late years the leaven of the mob spirit has been working with great rapidity. It has given rise to a situation of the most serious character, and which is almost national in its scope. Lynching as a punishment for crime in this country was not many years ago comparatively rare, and was justified by some people as being the only adequate remedy for one particularly atrocious kind of crime. It began with one crime, but has now extended to almost every crime of a serious nature. It began with the people of one race, but now takes in those of every race, white as well as black. It began with one section of the country, but has now become common in almost every section. And to what will the situation grow, at this rate of progress, in a few years more? “If anybody,” says the Chicago Tribune, “were to arise in a State legislature—that of Delaware or of Illinois—and were to propose that death at the stake should be the penalty for the commission of a particular crime or crimes, or should propose that the body of an executed criminal should be reduced to ashes in public, there would be an outburst of indignation. That man would be denounced in all quarters. Nobody would be venturesome enough to second his motion. Both suggestions would be branded as barbarous—utterly repugnant to the ‘spirit of the age.’ If the member of the legislature represented Wilmington, Del., or Belleville, Ill., there would be a mass-meeting of citizens to denounce him as an unfit representative.” Yet what the people would not allow to be done legally, they themselves do without recourse to the forms of government. This is indicative of the loss of self-control. Such acts, more than the forms of enlightened government which they set aside, show forth the real spirit of the age. The struggle of race against race, and of labor against wealth, in this country, are two sources from which emanates a tide of lawlessness which threatens to submerge the beneficent institutions of free government. Mob law means the setting aside of the existing government and the substitution7in its place of what is worse than the worst government—that which no more represents justice than does the chase of its victim by a beast of prey. Newspaper comments at the present time show that in some quarters the serious character of the situation is realized to a degree, but the people have so long been taught that a millennium of peace and righteousness is at hand, and have been led to trust so fully in the “enlightenment” of the present age as a safeguard against any lapse into barbarism, that they are slow to be warned by the direct evidence of their senses. The truth is we have reached a time the characteristics of which are explained only by the prophecies of God’s Word, which foretell what conditions are to exist upon the earth at the coming of the day of God.